It is known to vulcanize uncured or green tires using a mold in a tire press. Commonly, the molds have a top and a bottom mold half, within which the green tire is cured. The tire press includes devices for opening the mold, usually by lifting the top half from the bottom half, lifting the green tire into the bottom half and closing the top half, thereby encasing the green tire within the tire mold. A tire bladder is inserted inside the mold and the green tire and inflated to press the green tire into the sidewall and tread forming surfaces of the mold as heat and pressure are applied to the tire to cure it. After a predetermined time the mold is opened and the cured tire is removed from the press.
This two piece type mold for curing a tire has several drawbacks and therefore is suitable for low cost tire manufacture but when superior uniformity and quality is required the molds used for curing tires employ radially expandable segmented molds. These segmented molds have a pair of sidewall curing plates, a top plate and a bottom plate, and a plurality of tread forming segments.
The green tire is placed into these segmented molds when the top sidewall forming plate is opened and the plurality of tread forming segments are expanded in a radially open condition. When the tire is positioned inside the mold the segments are contracted radially inwardly to form an annular tread forming ring and the top sidewall plate is closed encasing the green tire. Again heat and pressure are applied and an inflatable bladder pushes the green tire into the mold as the tread and sidewall surfaces are created in the mold. Once cured the mold is opened and the cured tire is removed.
A common problem of molding tires using either two piece tire molds or segmented molds is the green tire must be expanded radially from its toroidially shaped form. This expansion causes movement of the components and the cords forming the belt structure and the plies of the carcass structure. Ideally, the green tire should be built very close to the tire's finished or cured shape. Neither the two piece tire molds nor the segmented molds described above are designed to achieve this ideal construction and molding objective.
A secondary problem of such building equipment is a large amount of equipment is used to cure a tire and most of this equipment sits idle as the mold curing cycle progresses. In WO99/25542 this issue was disclosed as an economically inefficient way of using capital resources. In that prior art patent they suggested employing a self-locking mold cure system with shared mold open, unload and close devices. This enabled several molds to be processed along four horizontally spaced parallel process lines.
The self-locking mold locked the top mold half to the bottom mold half by employing a lock mechanism. The lock mechanism included a lock cylinder, a lock frame having locking motors lock rods, with quick disconnect couplings and a lock ring. To lock the segmented mold 10, the lock cylinder lowers the lock frame until the lock ring is positioned around the segmented mold. This locked the segmented mold in the closed position. Once closed the lock motors are driven disconnecting the lock rods at the quick disconnect couplings. The locked mold is then capable of being transported to a curing station and once the tire is cured the mold can be unlocked wherein the lock mechanism is lowered by the lock cylinder so that the lock rods can engage the lock ring at the quick connect couplings. Next, the lock motors are driven causing the quick connect couplings to connect with the lock rods. This reconnects the lock rods with the lock rings. The locking cylinder is then raised, lifting the lock ring and thereby unlocking the segmented mold.
As can be appreciated the above mold employs numerous rods and coupling devices to create a self-locking mold. This creates a complexity that greatly diminished the value of such a molding system.
The present invention has the objective of creating a simple self-locking mold capable of superior strength without requiring numerous skeletal type rods and couplings as described above.
It is a further objective of the present invention to provide a mold that can accept the green tire and its building core internally while maintaining the tire's as-built dimensions very close to the as-molded dimensions.